“Who wants to go first?”
Professor Antonio Paes scanned the classroom of graduate students at the University of Texas at Dallas. A mix of sweatshirts and business attire filled the room as the final presentations for his Agentic AI class began. One group stepped forward after some technical hiccups and launched into their project: **Chain Pilot**, a sophisticated AI system designed to help businesses navigate supply chain disruptions.
The tool continuously monitors inventory and pricing, deploys autonomous fixes when possible, and even pits multiple AI “agents” — including a skeptic and an advocate — against each other to refine solutions for complex problems. Other groups presented a customizable AI travel planner and a competitive pricing intelligence crawler that scrapes the web for strategic insights.
“Really good,” Paes told the class. “I think all of the applications have real use… You can take this to any small or midsize company and try to sell that, because that can totally be used right now.”
As North Texas rides an AI boom, Texas universities are racing to equip students with specialized skills. The state now boasts **more than 20 AI-focused bachelor’s and master’s programs** — the highest number in the U.S. — blending technical expertise with traditional fields like business, engineering, and analytics.
“Finance is a domain. Marketing is a domain,” said Gaurav Shekhar, associate dean and professor at UT Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of Management. “But AI is not really a domain.”
From Niche to Mainstream
The first U.S. undergraduate AI degree was launched in 2018 at Carnegie Mellon University. Its director predicted AI was “here to stay.” That foresight proved accurate. By last year, over 300 institutions nationwide offered AI degrees or programs, with new offerings continuing to emerge across the country.
Texas is leading the charge. Programs include a new bachelor’s in AI at the University of North Texas (starting this fall) and one at UTEP. UNT introduced its program even while trimming others amid budget pressures, with a provost calling it essential preparation for a “ridiculously evolving world.”
UT Dallas renamed and expanded its established business analytics programs in 2024 to emphasize AI explicitly. The undergraduate degree offers concentrations such as Marketing Analytics and AI or Finance and Risk Analytics. The master’s program features tracks in data science, accounting analytics, and specialized courses like Applied Machine Learning and Robotic Process Automation. Enrollment remains strong: 50 undergraduates and 289 master’s students graduated this spring.
Paes’ Agentic AI class quickly became a standout, reaching full capacity with 50 students who built practical agents — from solving campus parking woes to automating medical billing disputes.
One student, Radhey Mutha, developed a tool that analyzes hospital bills line-by-line in plain language and generates dispute-ready PDFs. “A financial analyst would charge hundreds,” she noted. “Our agent does it for free.”
A Tough Job Market Reality Check
Despite the enthusiasm, new AI graduates are entering a challenging employment landscape. The U.S. and Texas economies have shown low unemployment but also a prolonged “low-hire, low-fire” environment. Companies are cautious amid AI-driven uncertainty, with some large tech firms cutting jobs while investing heavily in the technology.
A recent survey found 10% of Texas companies already report AI reducing their need for human workers. Young, highly educated job seekers have been hit hardest.
Still, graduates with hands-on AI experience hope to differentiate themselves.
“In our technology and operations division… that can carry weight,” said Jennifer Chandler, Dallas president of Bank of America. What ultimately matters, she emphasized, is demonstrated impact: “Where have you demonstrated you have used that expertise to save time for a company, to create an efficiency?”
At Ericsson, which has major North Texas operations, fewer than 1% of recent U.S. hires hold degrees explicitly titled “artificial intelligence.” However, candidates with related backgrounds in computer science, data science, and IT are in high demand across hundreds of roles.
“I would never say… that AI in a title doesn’t matter, because it’s the first knock on the door,” said Rosario Saud, head of talent and development for Ericsson Americas. “It’s not going to get you invited to the party.”
What stands out? Real projects. Saud highlighted a UTD graduate hired in an HR role partly due to his Google AI competition win on water consumption optimization.
Bridging Academia and Industry
Universities are actively engaging with employers. Hundreds of companies visit UT Dallas each semester to collaborate on student projects. “Every industry is disrupted with AI,” Shekhar said, “in a good way or not so good way… the best thing for [companies] to do is just to engage with academia.”
As the semester wrapped, Paes reminded students that while the corporate world faces a “gigantic reset,” their skills position them to drive innovation. “Coding is no longer a problem… The problem is: ‘What do you do with it? What kind of innovation [do] you bring?’
Students echoed that drive. Danielle Beagle, a former English major and military mechanic, used the class to slash weeks of invoice processing to 38 seconds. Muhammad Farid, a business analyst, planned to apply agentic AI and inventory expertise during a summer internship. Nhan Le hoped to pivot entirely, using her finance and AI background to launch a fintech startup.
AI is here to stay. Texas universities are preparing the next generation not just to understand the technology, but to deploy it creatively across every sector. The question now is whether graduates — and the broader workforce — can turn that knowledge into lasting opportunity amid rapid disruption.
“Talent gap.” “Skills shortage.” It’s the usual language that equates to “literacy crisis.” What employers call “skills” can be undefined or not well defined at all. I appreciate this article showing AI is not the issue alone (the distribution of AI across industries and individual firms is disjointed) and that there’s even a push to get more students going to college (showing vocational schools alone will not save our economy or services like in healthcare and mental health.
I can understand and agree with some of the reasons cited in the article, but I also wonder if there’s another issue: helping college graduates write strong resumes and cover letters. I have seen seniors’ resumes, and they need work.
So I’ve worked with a few students and friends on their materials, and they later got interviews and eventually a job. How many professors, especially in Humanities, help students prepare for the job market? How many students know they can still go to their career services for help? Some schools build that in and others I imagine simply give the degree and say “Congrats! Goodbye!” Broad strokes but in my experience I’m encountering students who need help making themselves visible to employers through the resume and they tell me “no one has helped me with this before.”
Anyway—literacy and the economy. No easy narratives to explain the issues you find.